Naked Tropics: Essays on Empire and Other Rogues
by Kenneth Maxwell
Routledge £19.99, 240 pages

Historians have often written about Latin America as if it were the victim - or beneficiary - of powerful trends beyond its control: Europe and North America have either brought enlightenment and democracy, or imprisoned the region in a tightly knit web of economic dependency. It is a method that leads to a kind of fatalism where historical outcomes are always virtually inevitable and where only the most charismatic leaders are able to avert crisis.

The British historian Kenneth Maxwell - director of the Latin America programme at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York - has been at odds with this approach in his extensive writings on Portugal, Brazil and Latin America more generally. His latest book is a wide-ranging selection of essays, its choice of subjects in tune with the fashion for micro-history that has made salt or the cod worthy subjects for analysis. Maxwell writes entertainingly about pirates and the history of chocolate, for example.

His pieces on subjects such as the expulsion of the Jesuits from 18th-century Brazil or the life of Charles R. Boxer, a soldier and diplomat turned historian of Portugal's imperial expansion, might hint at an overly academic focus. But this is lively history, made more readable by fascinating glimpses into the historian's own life and his passion for Brazil. This began in a "vast barnlike and decrepit old picture palace" in Cambridge where, as an undergraduate, he saw Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus erupt "magnificently from the screen with drama, colour and extraordinary music".

More importantly, Maxwell always keeps a firm eye on the bigger picture. And there is a big and important question at the centre of this book. Why did Brazil develop in such a different way to its neighbours? While Latin America's nationalist revolutionaries successfully defeated Spanish colonialism on the battlefield, the same generation of Brazilians simply took over the reins of imperial management after the Portuguese crown moved to Rio de Janeiro during the Napeoleonic Wars. In 1820 it was the Portuguese merchants of Oporto who rebelled against Brazilian domination. And when the independent Spanish-speaking nations broke up into more than a dozen independent republics, Brazilian elites remained united around their attachment to the institutions of monarchy, slavery and empire. All this provided the basis for a highly unequal society, but it also bequeathed a much greater degree of political stability than that enjoyed in Spanish America.

Three essays - "Hegemonies Old and New", "The Idea of a Luso-Brazilian Empire" and "Why Was Brazil Different?" - explain why. Imperial rivalries certainly played their part. As Spanish and Portuguese power declined in the 18th century, Britain and France competed for influence in the region. But while France aligned itself with the Spanish crown, Britain pursued an alliance with Lisbon, decisively winning the battle for influence after its triumph in the Napoleonic Wars.

Maxwell though is keen to stress that these external influences are not all-explanatory. He takes a distance from dependency theories that see national independence as a kind of historical blip that simply marks the passage from formal colonial dependency on Portugal to informal dependence on British economic imperialism. "Dependency theory tended to homogenise the Latin American experience into a worldwide, explanatory model," he writes, adding that the approach "has led to an almost total exclusion of detailed examination of elites, institutions and above all intellectual life, politics and policy."

Portuguese colonial policy was more enlightened than that of Spain. While the Spanish crown dithered in the face of unrest in its colonies, Portugal built alliances with Brazilian business, frequently - under policies pursued by Portuguese ministers such as the Marques de Pombal or, later, Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho - favouring larger interests in the colonies at the expense of weaker Portuguese competitors. "Portugal's colonial policy under Pombal effectively sought to defuse tensions within the colonial nexus by preventing any polarisation along colonial versus metropolitan lines," says Maxwell.

In the same way, Maxwell acknowledges the influence of European liberal and republican ideas in the movement that eventually led to Brazilian independence. But here too local factors limited their influence.

Slave labour imported from Africa had been the basis of the colony's export economy, to an extent paralleled in Spanish America only in Cuba. The successful Haitian rebellion of 1792 terrified Brazilian slave-owners, calmed the republican ardour of the country's elites and made them quite happy to preserve a smoother relationship with the colonial power. "Whereas in the 1780s would-be Latin American revolutionaries had found inspiration in George Washington, by the 1790s they recoiled in fear before the example of Toussaint L'Ouverture," says Maxwell. Subsequently, although Brazil fell into the British orbit, imperial sway was limited. British pressure to curb the slave trade was ignored by Brazilian elites, who abandoned slavery only at the end of the 19th century.

But however reactionary its roots, the national cohesion that developed allowed Brazil a relatively high level of political stability, and contributed to the inclusive national culture that is expressed by Brazilian passion for football, samba and dance. It is a culture that has helped soften the country's encounters with political extremes. Brazilian military rule in the 1960s and 1970s was neither as demonic as that of Argentina nor as ruthlessly repressive as that of Chile. The transition to democracy was smooth. Brazilians even learned to adapt to the frightening realities of hyperinflation.

The question now is whether this cultural flexibility can rise to the new challenges raised by globalisation and liberal reform. It is a question given all the more relevance by the election to power last year of the country's first working-class president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula's election and the relative success of his first year in office came too late for this volume, but Maxwell outlines the issues faced by Lula in a brilliant essay on the 1990s entitled "The Two Brazils". Can Lula begin to integrate the millions of Brazilians who live in poverty at the edge of society while maintaining economic and financial stability? The odds may be against even modest success but - if Brazilian history is any guide - it just might be possible.

Richard Lapper is the FT's Latin America editor.